The rivers are blocked up,
and navigation in the interior of the islands is perishing, thanks to
the obstacles created by a timid and mistrusting system of government;
and there scarcely remains in the memory anything but the name of all
that naval architecture. It has vanished, without modern improvements
having come to replace it in such proportion as, during the past
centuries, has occurred in adjacent countries....--_Rizal_.
[72] It seems that some species of trees disappeared or became
very scarce because of the excessive ship-building that took place
later. One of them is the _betis_.--_Rizal_.
Blanco states (_Flora_, ed. 1845, p. 281) that the betis (_Azaola
betis_) was common in Pampanga and other regions.
Delgado describes the various species of trees in the Philippines
in the first six treatises of the first part of the fourth book
of _Historia general de Filipinas_ (Manila, 1892). He mentions by
name more than seventy trees grown on the level plains and near the
shores; more than forty fruit-trees; more than twenty-five species
grown in the mountains; sixteen that actually grow in the water; and
many kinds of palms.
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